


Four Matesprits for Four Friends

by krazieLeylines



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Arranged Marriage, Feralstuck, Multi, The troll race is all but dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-04 11:19:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krazieLeylines/pseuds/krazieLeylines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the desolation of their planet, and the defeat in the hands of humanity, the troll race is hanging by a thin thread. Adaptation is their only solution, and that means sucking up their pride, and building a future where trolls live as humans. In how they reproduce, in how they spend their days, even how they view romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Meeting of Gills and Fins

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for my friend, [Nathan](pancakesatfiveam.tumblr.com)! He suggested the idea, and it was impossible for me to resist.

“So this is it.”

That wasn’t the type of talk Her Imperial Condescension wanted to hear, but she didn’t say anything to the defeatist remark. Her gaze bore into a spot on the opposite wall, lost to the words of fear and anger buzzing around her from the group of highbloods situated around the table. 

Most of those in the crowd were sea-dwellers, troll royalty, their fins and gills and tentacles and other such ocean-themed attributes causing the sole land-dweller, with his long goat ears and demon-slitted eyes, to stand out. However, the gills at his neck and the purple blood in his veins allowed the clerical man, the Grand Highblood, reason enough to sit amongst the queens and kings on either side of him, shadowed by his enormous girth.

The whispered conversations were only half as annoying as the faint beeping of the machine at the Empress’s left. There her immortal beloved stood, the sole piece of her magnificent vessel that her men had managed to scavenge when it was destroyed.

He was a Psionic, The Psiioniic, although the brittle bones, pallid flesh and bristling electricity that made up his body were lacking a mind to govern it all. The tubes pumping oxygen into his lungs and blood through his veins were the only thing keeping him from falling apart, fuchsia-blooded life powers or not. It was a human device, something noisy and fragile and made of cold, lifeless metal. Once upon a time, the troll race would have had the means to not only make a more functional machine out of organic, living material, but would have been able to provide him a new body as well. 

But that technology, like their race and culture itself was about to follow, was gone.

Out of these various annoyances and vexing sounds, there was one the Condesce focused in on: the sound of an innocent child’s giggling. The Heiress, merely a sweep old, was playing with her dolls, sitting in the space created between her mother’s crossed ankles. 

Feferi Peixes was the first of her kind to be created through non-traditional means, having never been introduced to a birthing mother grub in her entire short lifespan. The Condesce had carried the child when she was just a grub within her own body, as had been spoken of in tales of ancient, pre-civilization times. It had been a devastating blow to her pride, but if anyone was to make the sacrifice for their race, it was going to be her. 

After all, the last of the lusii were gone. Without a means of evolving their system of reproduction, the troll race would have gone extinct. 

She had been the first, but not the last. The Grand Highblood’s prodigy, Gamzee, sat at the larger troll’s lap, his floppy ears a miniature version of his ancestor’s. He held his tiny hooves in his feet, uncharacteristically quiet and still for a wriggler of his age, seemingly intimidated by all the adults surrounding him. 

Feferi had been the first successful case out of a mountain of failures. Her two secondary genetic ancestors were both in the room, although the Condesce would never allow herself to sink so low as to adopt traditional human family units. Not with the Grand Highblood, and not with the broken, half-metal creature that stood in the place of the man she had once loved. Nor would have it occurred to her to think of Feferi and Gamzee as siblings, nor the third, entirely ignored third wriggler in the room.

One day, perhaps, Her Imperial Condescension would have her galactic empire to rule over once more, but for now, they had to focus on survival on this one, puny little planet. Gently, the little Feferi was nudged to the side with a foot.

When the Condesce stood up, she meant business. Everyone knew it, and went silent and stiff, not even chancing the jingling of a bracelet or a rustle of fabric annoy their Empress. She was an intimidating troll, having lived longer than any other troll before her. A tangle of hair fell from her head, half of the mass a collection of writhing, fuchsia-flushed tentacles, like her lusus had had. A few more curled around her feet, a collection of tails that no other troll could deny their simultaneous horror and envy of. No one but the Grand Highblood stood taller than the troll Empress, and even he usually sunk a little in a half-sincere bow to allow her to look over his head. 

“Adaptation is our only solution,” Her Imperial Condescension spoke in a resonating, hissing tone, one tentacle tail slithering out to catch Feferi’s ankle before the little girl crawled off, “I am all too awave that we have already adapted enough, but unless we change our waves, or give an impression of change, the humans will obliterate us.”

The Grand Highblood, who found everything, including and perhaps especially the things that weren’t meant to be found so, humorous, gave a snort. “And by doin’ mother fuckin’ what, exactly? Filin’ down our horns, paintin’ ourselves pinks and browns and other unnatural, ugly fuck colors?” 

“No.” The Condesce kept her reply quirk and curt. The last thing she needed was a scene. “We need their trust.”

Perhaps they thought she was taking a dramatic pause as she weighed various scenarios in her mind. She wasn’t about to tell them she didn’t have a clue about how to win said trust, after all. Impressions were everything. Besides, she wasn’t too worried. She was a genius. It would come to her.

And then, for the first time in over eight hundred sweeps, the Psiioniic made a sound.

“I’m sorry.” Her Imperial Condescension walked over to the buzzing, mutant troll, as bare of any secondary characteristics as a human. As she drew closer, the small wriggler at his feet pulled himself deeper against the mass of flesh and fabric that may have once been the Psiioniic’s thigh, letting out a pathetic squeak which might have been considered a threat to anyone under the age of three sweeps. “Did you say something, darling?” 

Yet his head hung as limpless as ever as she raised his face with a gloved palm. Nothing but the usual flickering red and blue sparks lit up his listless eyes. Mustard blood caked his forehead. He truly was a wretched sight.

Then the lump in his throat bobbed, and another wheezing sound escaped his ever slightly parted lips.

Done with looking at him, the Empress turned away to nod at the Grand Highblood. “Translate the Psiioniic’s thoughts, if you’d please, cleric.”

Gamzee was moved to another lap, the sea-dweller who received him flaring his fins in distaste, but she did nothing to push the suddenly statue stiff child away. The Grand Highblood stood, his spine twisted into an arch in his old age, so that he bent forward not unlike the Earth planet’s apes. However, his arcane power was stronger than it had been all his many sweeps, and when his eyes glowed purple, the entire room was washed over with the backlash of violet tinted light. 

The Psiioniic’s eyes glazed over, swirling with the chucklevoodoo magic. He spoke again, his voice crispy and unused, like a fragile ancient piece of parchment. “Marriage,” is all he said.

“Marriage?” The Condesce looked at him, thinking that perhaps he was merely experiencing a dream. Surely he couldn’t have been suggesting what she thought he was suggesting? A marriage between troll and human? Predetermining any of a troll’s four quadrants was stripping them of troll serendipity, a privilege that any able-bodied troll was promised from birth. Nay, it was a basic troll right. Not to mention that humans only had one quadrant, a concupiscent quadrant, not only depriving them of serendipity, but the right to establish their genes in the next generation as well. 

The Psiioniic’s next words cleared her doubts. “It’th… what the Thignlethh would have wanted…”

Perhaps he didn’t fully realize he was speaking aloud? The Empress had to laugh. Why would she want to do anything that the greatest terrorist in Alternian history would have supported? Clearly the Psiioniic was out of his mind! 

“No genetic offspring of mine will take a human in his quadrant,” the Grand Highblood said as he released the Psiioniic from the spell, taking Gamzee back and giving his head a few harsh pats in something vaguely resembling affection, “I have all the mother fuckin’ plans for this little one. Nah, if we do this, we’re going to do it with grubs no one’s gonna miss.”

The Condesce opened her mouth to let him know that no, idiot, they would find some other way to win the human’s trust. However, a few other sea-dwellers were nodding. “One of each of the lesser powers should offer a child,” one king said, “One of the Court of His Honorable Tyranny, one of the Child-Rearers, one of the Soldiers, and…” He paused, and then shrugged his shoulders, glancing at the Grand Highblood. “By all means, the fourth should be one of the Church. No offense, holy man. But we all must make our sacrifices for the good of the race.”

“Yeah?” The Grand Highblood’s flashed his fangs as he spoke, “And what sacrifice are you salt-licking sea-lovers plannin’ on makin’?”

“We’ve allowed the likes of you into our hall, have we not?”

Before a fight could break out, Her Imperial Condescension placed herself between the two, petting the trembling wriggler named Gamzee as she glared the two trolls down. At last, the Grand Highblood’s clubs were put to the side, having raised them so fast that she hadn’t even noticed he had held them. “Now, now. Good points have been made. The Church should make a sacrifice.”

The Grand Highblood gave the Condesce a look of betrayal, bitter and dark and oh so pleasant to look upon. However, it was unneeded. She was saving his skin. “The church in question,” she whispered, “hasn’t been specified yet.”

They were all confused, just as she knew they would be. 

And then, ever so slowly, the Grand Highblood’s tense stance relaxed, and a knowing smirk spread across his features. “That’s right,” he said, “we never got around to showing our peeps what we found in hidden among the other grubs.” With a laugh, he nudged Gamzee until the small troll fell to his hooves, landing shakily. “Go and grab your friend, boo.” With a delighted smile, the young troll obliged. He hobbled excitedly over the tiles and out the door.

The confusion in the room was absolutely delectable, and the Condesce drank deeply of it. It took some time, as Gamzee was small and it took him a long time to travel any big distance, but at last he was returning, a small grub clutched in his arms.

Immediately, the sea-dwellers were standing, pushing at each other for a better look. But it was no trick of the light, nor an illusion.

The grub’s squishy body and bright blinking eyes were a crimson red. 

“Is Kark kat,” Gamzee announced proudly, as though he had hatched the thing himself, petting the irritated grub along its spine until it ceased that annoying scared whirring sound it was making. Its legs squirmed in the open air until Gamzee shifted his hold to better secure him.

“Is that…”

“Somehow, somewhere, along the way,” the Condesce interrupted, overjoyed at finally revealing their little miracle discovery, “the Sufferer must have contributed to the genetic slurry, and fathered a descendant. And someone in our generation has willingly passed this cursed genetic pool on, fathering this bastard wriggler with the help of their lover’s mutant material. All passed by, unnoticed, or perhaps approved, by the jadebloods. This tiny wriggler, the Sufferer’s biological prodigy, within this very room.”

“The Sufferer inspired a religion,” the Grand Highblood added, “This wriggler can be the church’s icon, and save Gamzee the doomed quadrant.”

“Just as the Signless would have wanted it,” the Condesce told the Psiioniic.

The room appeared to be in favor of that plan, and Gamzee, none the wiser, continued to pet his little friend, who buried his face into his toddler locks.

“Now to visit the jadebloods,” the Condesce concluded, “to pick the three other trolls.”


	2. First Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little kid shenanigans are the best shenanigans

“Are we there yet?”

The fatherly figure driving the car laughed, shaking his head, seeming to possess a strange patient which left him utterly unperturbed even as the question had been repeated a thousand times prior. He glanced up at the rearview window, catching a glance of his feisty little girl, and her baby brother, asleep on her shoulder, clutching his rabbit plush. Sitting beside the father, a man known as Jim Egbert, was his father-in-law, mostly known as Grandpa, and in the backseat with the kids was a slumbering Nanna, just as wiped out as her youngest grandchild.

They were one big happy family, out on a road trip to go visit some meet with a woman that Jim had been speaking to online. Computer dating was such a pesky, modern thing, but Grandpa had insisted, and here they were.

“I said, are we there yet?”

“Oh, my mistake.” Jim reached for his ear, taking out a coin and smiling as he caught Jade’s glowing smile out of the corner of his eyes. “Must have had something stuck in my ear. What was that, pumpkin?”

Jade strained to reach the quarter, but her arm was too short. Grandpa helped the coin move from Jim’s hand to Jade’s, smiling sweetly at her. “You have to stop pestering your dad, sweetheart,” he advised the excitable youngster, “Why, you’ll distract him and he’ll veer off the road and we’ll all end up flatter than pancakes!”

The little girl wasn’t scared by his teasing, though, and grabbed at Grandpa Jake’s fingers. “But pa…” she whined, kicking her feet, “we’ve been on the road forever!”

“Forever, huh?” Grandpa turned to his son-in-law and chuckled. “Forever is a whole lot shorter than I remember it, and I lived it!” He slapped his knee, shaking his head. “Stop with your tomfoolery, child. We shall get there when we get there. Why not take a snooze like your brother? He has the right idea, I think. Could go for a few hours of rest myself.”

“I’m not tired.” Jade pouted her bottom lip, making a puppy face in a vain attempt to gain some sympathy. “Are we maybe… almost there?” 

Neither adult answered her for a solid two minutes, to the point where she thought that they had forgotten about her. Jade signed and crossed her arms defiantly across her chest, glaring straight forward until her father finally spoke up.

“That depends.” Dad Egbert glanced around at the various street signs, slowing down the car. “Father, what street did Ms. Lalonde live on again?”

“Pine Street, Jimbo.”

A huge, sunny smile unfolded across Mr. Egbert’s face. He turned into the next street, as Grandpa turned around to wake Nanna and John up.

“Huh?” John, sleepy and cranky, shuffled about in his seat. “What’s going on?”

Jim was busy counting down the houses. “Thirty-five, thirty-three…” He pointed them out as he went, and there was a stirring of excitement rippling from all of the adults. Jade soon caught it, apparently, for she bounced in place as much as her buckle would allow her to.

“Ahh, twenty-nine,” Jim announced, “We’re here.”

He turned down the driveway, which twisted off into the woods.

\--

It was a bit before Roxy opened the door. Dad stood there with his kids, one in each arm, and his parents standing behind him. Jim’s internet lover had severely downplayed the majesty and size of her home. 

“Can I ring the doorbell again?” John asked hopefully after a minute.

“No, no, not yet.” Jim tapped his foot, leaning back and wondering if perhaps Ms. Lalonde wasn’t home, despite there being two cars in the driveway that weren’t his. But it was rude to judge someone for their economic status, or what they saw fit as the appropriate number of automobiles for the household, he reminded himself. Perhaps he had come too early. 

He glanced at his watch. “I told her we’d be arriving in an hour or so. Perhaps the lady of the house is still asleep.”

Nanna and Grandpa looked up at the blue sky, and then back at Jim with expressions that mirrored the same level of sass. Grandpa went to speak first, but his wife put a hand to his arm to silence him. “Perhaps Roxy left you a message on your phone?” Nanna suggested kindly.

Just as the suggestion had left her mouth, Jim’s phone began to buzz.

The door opened, Roxy in the midst of rushing outside, her cell held up to her ear, two blonde-curled children at her heels, and a shaded man storming behind her. “Rox, don’t you fucking dare—”

Jim swiftly moved himself between the stranger and the mother with her children. “I’m aware I don’t know you, sir,” he said, noticing that despite the strange hat and juvenile clothes that he was sporting, this new man wasn’t much younger than he was, “but I’m going to have to politely ask you not to use such language around the children.” The strange man went to speak, but Jim raised a finger. “One moment, my cell,” he explained quickly, reaching for the still vibrating gadget in his pocket.

“Oh, don’t even bother,” Roxy advised, snapping her own cell shut, “That was me.”

There was a silence, as though no one knew where to begin. Jade squirmed to get a better look at the twins that might someday soon be her new siblings (or so Grandpa had whispered to her before).

Roxy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Jim, hello. I’d love to explain, but can we do it on the road?” She pet her daughter’s curls, smiling stiffly at the man she had flirted with many times with the use of technology. “I’m very late right now, you see.”

“Rox, this is a bad idea and you know it.”

Roxy began to count everyone, ignoring the triangle-shaded man. “If the kids sit on other people’s laps, we might be able to all fit in the van. Alright, Dirk, you can tag along.”

“But, Roxy—”

“If you want to fight, you’ve going to have to do it on the way. C’mon, everyone.” She walked with all the speed a confident woman in dangerously high heels could, scooping her key ring from her purse and unlocking the van with a quick beep. “Jim, you can have shotgun, if you so please.”

\--

“So, let me see if I have this all figured out.” Dad Egbert said slowly, several miles down the road, “This man, Dirk, is your ex-husband, who is protesting the fact that you volunteered your children for a secret project that pairs troll children with human children for marriage, that you and only a select few other scientists around the world know about. You planned upon heading to this event, which was scheduled an hour before I was meant to meet you at your house, and introduce you to my family. And now we are all headed to this event, while Dirk, your ex-husband, is still protesting it.”

The woman driving let out an infectious laughter. “You’ve got it babe,” she said, “To be fair, this event was scheduled last minute, and I was going to leave a key in the mailbox so that you could all make yourselves at home in case you arrived before I got back. And Dirk is being a jerk about this whole affair— the trolls want to use these marriages to build trust between our two species.”

“This being after their plans of planet domination fell through,” Dirk put in mildly, and Roxy shhhed him harshly. “This xenophobia is getting out of hand! Maybe the generation we met were blood-thirsty, raised to fit perfectly into the genocidal army their kind eventually all grew up to be, but my team and I have found no biological evidence to prove that trolls are in any way naturally evil, whatever that means.” Mother Lalonde laughed again, ignoring Dirk’s protesting input. “The youth we have studied are in most ways very much the same as human children. This plan to marry some trolls with humans will ensure our planets safety, but teaching the two species to co-exist.”

As she was speaking, Grandpa and Nanna were giving her their full attention. Jim watched his parents’ expressions turn from concerned to curious to full of respect. Glad they seemed to approve of his choice of girlfriend, Jim grinned, fluffing John’s hair as the boy sat on his lap, sharing his seatbelt. 

At last, Dirk couldn’t take it anymore. “Rox, girl, that’s perfectly great and all, but these are our kids. Dork dad— Jim, right? Nice to meet you, Jim. Surely you can’t agree with this!”

“I believe moving towards a war-free future for the sake of our children is a fabulous idea,” Mr. Egbert said, causing Dirk to groan heavily and flop back in his seat, “However, I think it’s only polite to take the father of your children’s opinion into all of this. I think Dirk’s concern is legitimate, as well as justified. The troll youngsters may be harmless, but their parents will be there, I am guessing.”

Getting fed up with listening to the back and forth of their parents, Jade pulled John closer to where her and Rose were sitting. Rose pointed out some deer antlers in the thick foliage on the side of the road, but the car was moving too quickly for the Egbert kids to catch sight of it.

“They’ll be plenty more,” Rose explained to them when they looked distraught with disappointment, “This area is full of woodland creatures.”

Dave continued to let his head follow the conversation, snapping from his dad, to his mom, and then back to the strange man their mom had invited along. Rose tapped Dave to get his attention, introducing her twin brother to John and Jade. 

“Are they gonna be our new siblings?” Dave asked uneasily.

It was a possibility clearly no one else had thought up, and Jade and John glanced to Rose, as she appeared to be the one in charge there.

“Depends on if they get…” Rose leaned in close, whisper-saying, “married.”

“…as well as hired security,” Roxy went on, having been explaining the multiple of reasons that Dirk’s concerns were, as she put it, ‘ridiculous’, “So there is nothing to fear. Besides, the only adult troll that will be there is one I have met before, one who is in charge of caring for the young. They call her a grubmother. Furthermore, as a grubmother, she has to abstain from war, picking sides, and even from pursuing romantic relationships. Sort of like a nun, but more fashionable, I think.”

The four kids were still considering the possibility of Dad Egbert and Mom Lalonde marrying. Dave thought he would miss his dad, even though it had been explained to him many times before that Dirk would come to visit at least once a week. The other three, however, came to the conclusion that it would be a fabulous affair, and Jade called being flower girl.

\--

“Why can’t I be goin’ wit him?” Gamzee’s speech was still in need of much improvement, despite having already celebrated his second wriggling day and nearing his third. (The trolls continued to use their own calendar, despite none of the seasons matching up correctly.)

The young grubmother, barely eleven sweeps old, bent down to tuck Gamzee’s curls back behind an offended, lowered ear. “Karkat needs to pick a special human friend on his own, Gamz. Having you there could confuse the kids about which trolls are available for… special friendship.” She could tell he was about to put up a fight about why _he_ wasn’t allowed a special friend, and the girl let out a deep breath, putting a finger to his lips to stop him. “Your father… wants to test this out with a few trolls only, okay? Maybe, later on, we can get you a special friend, too.”

That didn’t do anything but make Gamzee pout harder. “I wanna be Karkat’s special friend,” Gamzee whined, turning to glance over his shoulder as Karkat played on the other side of the pen, stacking the alphabet blocks into a fortress. 

What could the grubmother say? She shrugged her shoulders at Gamzee as he stomped his hooves angrily. “I’m sorry, Gamzee.” She offered him a hug, but he went back to the plastic fence instead.

Remembering the grubmother’s rule that he couldn’t distract Karkat, Gamzee instead surveyed the area. There were a lot of human kids, and only four trolls. Karkat, who was all by himself, growling distastefully at anyone who stepped close to his architectural masterpiece, and three kids that Gamzee didn’t know. The other three were all girls, a dragon-winged troll who had jumped out of a corner at Gamzee earlier and caused him to wet his pants, a creepy fanged girl who was currently pushing a kid off down the slide backwards, and the last one with the tiniest little butterfly wings that gave a nervous flutter anytime anyone rushed past her. 

The kid who had tumbled down the slide backwards was John, and he wasn’t the first person to receive that treatment from Vriska, the creepy fanged, scorpion tailed girl, that day. However, he was the first one who responded by giggling. Intrigued, Vriska ran down the slide to confront him. “What’s so darn funny?” She demanded of him.

John was young, however, and unable to speak more than an exclaimed, “Again, again!”

“Pfft.” Seeming offended by the boy’s joy, Vriska walked over, grabbed his wrist and pulled him back to the ladder. She prodded him in the back with one of her long, twisted claws. “No stowaways having fun on my ship!” She told him, “Time to walk the plank. Again.”

That, if anything, only prompted John to giggle harder. “Are you a priwit?” John asked Vriska as he climbed, urged forward by the nail digging at his spine. 

“It’s caaalled a pirate,” Vriska corrected him, easily pulling herself to the top by skipping a few of the steps of the ladder. “This is the pirate ship, and I am its captain. Her captain, I mean. Because pirate ships are girls. Everyone knows that.” 

At some point, John had stopped listening to her, moving around to poke at the small, bluish tail poking out underneath her shirt. “Wassat?”

The tail twitched away from his pointed finger, as if on its own accord. Vriska moved around in a circle trying to grab it, and showed off the pointed stinger at the end with pride. “This is my scorpion tail,” Vriska explained. She let John pet it, but shooed him away from the tip. John asked if it was “poisonus or somethin”, to which Vriska gave an enthusiastic nod. “You have to be veeery careful, because if it pricks you, you could die,” she explained, watching with glee as John’s eyes widened.

The poisonous part was a lie, but John didn’t know that. His fingers squeezed each side of the stinger, but stayed a safe distance from the actual point. “Cool,” John said. 

Vriska made a fake attempt to stab him with it, causing John to stumble backwards, and back down the slide. This time he tumbled onto his head, and a few kids rushed over to check if he was okay. One was Kanaya, the moth-winged girl, who had been playing nearby in case she was needed to scold Vriska. Her moment having arrived, Kanaya pointed an accusing finger up at Vriska, who for the first time that day hadn’t meant to cause someone to fall down the slide. 

“Vriska, stop that! You always hurt people by playing too rough!” Kanaya’s wings hummed softly with how fast they flapped back and forth behind her, a sound that might have been intimidating in an older troll. John, hand on the back of his head, shooing his sister and Rose away, waved at Kanaya with his free hand. “’M okay,” he told her.

Both of the girls took either of John’s arms, helping him back to his feet. Jade was more concerned with looking over the bump on John’s noggin, but Rose seemed upset.

“Kanaya is right,” Rose told John, then turned her gaze to Vriska, who was making her way back down, “John could have broken his neck!” Seeming unafraid of Vriska, whereas Kanaya had backed down when the taller girl approached, Rose put her nose right in Vriska’s face. “The rules are that you have to sit on the slide.”

“That’s right!” Kanaya’s face lit up, and she touched Rose’s arm. “Vriska, you broke a rule, so I have to get Terezi.”

Vriska’s response was immediate. “Nooo, not her. She’s such a party pooper.” It was too late, though, as Kanaya had signaled to Terezi, and the dragon-winged girl was rushing to them before Vriska had finished speaking. “Terezi, no, go away!”

“Terezi has this,” Kanaya whispered to Rose, “Do you want to go back to coloring?”

The two girls walked off, hand in hand, as Terezi was pushing Vriska towards a corner for a time out. John followed after them, and promised to help keep Vriska some company while she was confided to stay in the same spot. True to his word, he sat crisscrossed on the floor behind her as she stood with her forehead against the wall, yapping at her and sometimes yanking on her tail when she stopped replying.

Gamzee watched all of these events unfold, as did the jadeblood that now stood next to him. It was her job to choose who each troll was most compatible with, and Vriska was easily settled. Kanaya had spent nearly all of her time doodling with Rose, who had come to her asking to touch her wings. That left two.

“What do you think, Gamzee?” The jadeblood asked the small highblood, though his gaze never strayed from Karkat for long. She could recognize young pale love, and it brought a smile to her face. “You know Karkat pretty well. Who here would make a good friend for him?” She noticed that Karkat had made no attempt to socialize just yet, and was starting to worry about it. If he kept to himself the whole time, the Grand Highblood would not be pleased. 

“I dunno,” Gamzee said, still looking forlorn. Karkat sometimes glanced over and made an ugly face at Gamzee, causing him to laugh. Other than that, Gamzee had remained in a sour mood. 

Mom Lalonde, who had made her way over to socialize with the young grubmother some time ago, tapped at her shoulder. “Maybe if you let Gamzee in, Karkat would feel less shy?” Gamzee looked up at the two adults hopefully, ears sprung upright. Seeing this, Roxy continued on. “It looks like the three girl trolls all know each other, but Karkat doesn’t know anyone here except for Gamzee. That can’t be easy for the poor little fella.” 

It was true, and the jadeblood nodded, if a bit hesitantly. “We might as well try.” 

Gamzee was dancing in his place as they unlatched the gate, allowing the small troll to barge inside and nearly tackle Karkat over. While Karkat didn’t go down, his tower did, and within seconds Karkat was livid with rage.

“Gamzee! How could you!” Karkat hissed through his fangs, trying to catch some of the blocks and place them back where they had been before. “Sorry, sorry,” Gamzee kept saying, accidentally sitting on Karkat’s long tail for a split second before jolting away and apologizing faster. The small structure crumbed down to the ground, try as Karkat might to save it mid-fall. 

For a moment, Karkat mourned his broken fortress, before turning his angered gaze back to Gamzee, who was cowering at the same time as he curled up against his side for comfort. 

“Idiot,” Karkat grumbled after a moment, before reaching out to begin again. Gamzee helped, though he often had his hands swatted away if he didn’t do exactly as Karkat ordered him to. Still, Karkat’s tail curled around the puff of fur that was Gamzee’s, and their hips never lost contact with one another. Their pale connection was rare behind trolls so young, but unmistakable. While most trolls never began thinking favorably of concupiscent love until puberty, moiralleigance was often experimented with from as early an age as a troll’s first sweep. Some trolls were considered to be hatched for one another when it came to pale love, and Gamzee and Karkat appeared prime examples of this phenomenon. 

The once fallen fortress was soon restored to its former glory, and Gamzee was sent to fetch some legos for them to add a fort around it. Before long, they had a nice bridge in the middle of construction, when, in their dedication, they failed to notice the foot about to destroy their hard work for a second time until it was too late.

“You can’t mix legos and alphabet blocks,” Dave informed them as if it were a fact of the universe. Karkat almost pounced on him, but Gamzee was a step ahead of his friend’s temper, and held him back. 

“Jerk!” Karkat spat at the seemingly unaffected boy, “You suck!”

Gamzee tried to calm Karkat down unsuccessfully, as Dave plopped down and began using their legos for his own project. “You just can’t hog them both,” he informed Karkat as he struggled to escape Gamzee’s lap, “You were the mean one here, just saying.”

Struggling with Karkat, Gamzee glanced around. He was unsure how to help, uncomfortable dealing with conflict. Just as he was getting desperate, he saw help coming, and flinched at her red-eyed grin.

“That is another offense!”

Jade came running after Terezi, as the troll stormed up to Dave. Jade had been the one to summon Terezi when she noticed Dave starting trouble. “Dave, if you keep causing a mess, Terezi is going to keep punishing you,” Jade told Dave, pouting, “Why can’t you play nice?” She appeared as though she wanted to stop Terezi, but Dave sat there just smiling up at Terezi and greeted her as “officer”.

“Some people are just born bad,” Terezi told Jade, who scowled distastefully at her, before turning back to Dave, “C’mon, trouble-maker. You didn’t learn your last lesson, so now it’s six minutes in the corner!” She gripped Dave’s arm, forcing him onto his feet. “If you do the crime, you gotta do the time.” 

“You have to say please,” was all Dave said, smiling and waving to Gamzee and Karkat as he was dragged back off to the corner Terezi had now reserved for him.

There was a second in which it appeared as though Jade would follow them, but as she glanced at the ruins of the fortress, she reconsidered. “Do you mind if I help?” Jade asked them, hands clasped behind her back.

“No!” Karkat said, a second before Gamzee’s “Sure!”

“No,” Karkat repeated himself, glaring up at Gamzee’s chin. “We don’t need a stupid girl’s help. We’ll do perfectly fine all on our own.”

Jade bristled, her cute bunny nose wrinkling angrily. “I am so not stupid,” she proclaimed, taking a few steps forward so that Karkat flinched back into Gamzee’s chest, “I can count to one hundred, and I can sing the alphabet backwards!”

“Liar,” Karkat said dismissively, “No one can sing the alphabet backwards.” 

Determined to prove Karkat wrong, and establish her intellectual superiority, Jade coughed into her hand and began to sing. “Z, y, x, w, v, u, t, s, r, q, uh…” Jade stopped, biting her lip and closing her eyes. “T, s, r, q, and… the next letter is…”

“See!” Karkat pulled himself from Gamzee’s grasp and stood up, pausing a moment as he noticed she was taller than him. “I told you, it’s impossible.”

“Is not! I just forgot a bit, but I’ve done it before.” Jade hummed the song to herself, trying to remember the next letter, but Karkat didn’t give her the chance. “I don’t believe you,” he taunted, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” This, obviously, was where Jade drew the line. 

“I am wearing a skirt,” Jade pointed out, balling up the fabric in her hands to show Karkat, “And I made it at least halfway, and that’s a lot farther than you could have. So I’m smarter than you are, and it’s not because I’m a girl, it’s just because I am smart, and you are not. And you can build your stupid fort yourself. Sorry for being nice!”

Having officially lost her patience, Jade was about to storm off, when Karkat stopped her with a question. “Wait, you knew it was a fortress?”

A heavy sigh, and Jade faced Karkat again. “Yes, of course! It was built like a wall to keep enemies from invading.” Jade watched Karkat’s open-mouthed disbelief, and plopped herself down across from them. Gamzee was silent, apparently counting on his fingers for a reason Jade didn’t ask. “Also your fort was silly, because you didn’t even have a castle or anything important to guard. Let me help you, and I can make you the prettiest palace, and if you take back what you said about me being stupid, I’ll even let you and your friend live there with me.”

It was a good deal, but Karkat waited a moment before shaking her hand in agreement. He reseated himself on Gamzee’s lap, deciding it was more comfortable than the floor. “Fine,” Karkat admitted, “you’re not stupid. I guess you know your buildings, at least. But I don’t want a girly palace, okay?”

“Deal,” Jade said.

Gamzee jumped, causing Karkat to yelp. “P! It’s r, and then q, and then p. That was the next letter in the backwards alphabet.”

This revelation was greeted with silence, although Jade gave Gamzee a small smile to match his triumphant grin. “I’m Jade, by the way,” she introduced herself to the troll boys, grabbing some of the legos and pulling them close to her to start the foundation of the palace.

“I’m Karkat,” Karkat replied, “and this is Gamzee. He’s stupid, but he’s mine.”

In Dave’s timeout corner, Terezi had begun batting Dave with a toy microphone, until the jadeblood ordered her to cut it out. 

“Are you going to put yourself in time out now?” Dave asked the pouting Terezi. He waited for her to answer, but she didn’t, except for a sniffle and a nod. Her wings were even drooping, which was a big change from her flapping them around and whacking people in the face with them. It was kind of sad, and not at all as satisfying as Dave had hoped it would be.

“Hey,” Dave said, touching her arm, “You can share my corner, if you want.”


End file.
